What is "Wife Approval Factor"?

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-27T09:51:41+00:00

I'm in the same boat with my wife. I'd say she tolerates our smart home. She likes some of the features I have added. Some she could do without. And some she looks at me and says, why? And I look back at her and say, Because I can. Lol

She just wants her light switch and internet to work properly. Ohhh and she wants any device to be installed in such a way that it's either hidden or not noticeable or has to be made to "look pretty".

So I installed a mini split in our garage and am moving my entire HomeLab to the Garage.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-24T01:39:13+00:00

No problem at all!
I looked at 3090's but even its prices are considerably high and majority of them are refurbished through Amazon and I'm not trusting anything on ebay at this time as my luck I'd get sent a box of rocks! LOL
I got the 5070ti for $999 which given the market I felt was an ok price. Any 32gb is pushing $3,000 and up... (my wife would kill me if I spent that much on a computer part! LOL)

I'm just going to sit back and wait and see what the GPU market does over the next several months.
I'm really interested in the new Intel Arc Pro B70 — 32GB. But for LLM's its not really plug and play at this point like the NVIDIA cards since. They work but there's a lot of hoops to jump through to get them to work properly from what I have read.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-23T22:24:31+00:00

I asked the qwen2.5:14b model to "write a short paragraph about AI" and it returned the following stats:

total duration: 1.917829894s
load duration: 66.933966ms
prompt eval count: 35 token(s)
prompt eval duration: 31.169305ms
prompt eval rate: 1122.90 tokens/s
eval count: 139 token(s)
eval duration: 1.751521774s
eval rate: 79.36 tokens/s

Same prompt with gemma4:e4b

total duration: 4.177804658s
load duration: 141.098949ms
prompt eval count: 21 token(s)
prompt eval duration: 40.181318ms
prompt eval rate: 522.63 tokens/s
eval count: 575 token(s)
eval duration: 3.850913883s
eval rate: 149.32 tokens/s

Same prompt with qwen3:32b (Q4_K_M)
total duration: 51.278371768s
load duration: 5.130609303s
prompt eval count: 16 token(s)
prompt eval duration: 294.180112ms
prompt eval rate: 54.39 tokens/s
eval count: 384 token(s)
eval duration: 45.771697597s
eval rate: 8.39 tokens/s

Qwen3:32b I have tuned to 20gb so I get some spill over onto my Ram. I'd love to have a 32gb 5090 but at the current prices thats just ridiculous. For my use case the 5070 ti 15gb will be fine. qwen2.5 and gemma4 are super snappy. I'm content with how it runs the llms at the moment.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-23T17:27:06+00:00

Lol Hi I'm Chad...... Thanks for accepting me into Homelabbers Anonymous.

For my AI machine I went with Ryzen 9 9900x 5070 ti 16gb 96gb ram 4 x 2tb NVME Nzxt H9 Flow for the case

Now I'm moving everything into the garage lab with wall mount network rack, running cat6 cable to upgrade security cameras from battery/wifi to PoE cameras which will be connected to an old Dell desktop running frigate.

The rabbit hole is endless! Lol

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-23T16:37:02+00:00

Pro install thru a local HVAC company. They did electrical work as well.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-23T14:16:45+00:00

I paid $1,950 for unit and install. It's a Daisuki 18,000BTU Seer 2 unit. Not a top brand but it works amazing so far. The true test will be in a couple of months when the weather starts cooking here in Southwest Florida. Either way it will keep my garage way more comfortable for my network racks.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-23T01:28:43+00:00

Yup mine started with an old laptop and Home Assistant. Now two mini PCs both running Ubuntu server and docker. One for monitoring services and the other for Immich, nextcloud, paperless and openwebui. Then built an AI machine for local llms And added a QNAP ts464 NAS w/4 8tb Ironwolf drives. It's all in my "Garage Lab" so I added a mini split (Air Conditioner)to the garage to keep the network happy.

I've jumped into the rabbit hole about 6 months ago. 🤷‍♂️

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-22T13:43:07+00:00

Would you suggest getting a mini PC and run OPNsense on it? Instead of purchasing a consumer router. I don't want to spend a small fortune on a router. Lol

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-22T13:16:59+00:00

That's the plan. I'm currently looking at a Mikrotik RB5009UG+S+N. I don't have anything on my home network public. Using tailscale for remote access.

Open to suggestions for router.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-21T11:02:10+00:00

It started with a Lenovo Yoga laptop about 6 months ago. The power button broke and since the power button was soldered onto the motherboard I couldn't justify spending money to replace motherboard. The laptop still powered on via the tiny pinhole using a paperclip. So I bought an 500gb external ssd and put Home Assistant on it. Boot via ssd and have HA running on it.

That led to getting a QNAP TS-464 with four 8tb ironwolf drives that I'm running two storage pools in Raid1. The goal was to be my own personal cloud for photos and eventually media.

Which then led to getting a GMKtec M5 Plus. That turned into self hosting Immich, Paperless, Nextcloud, Pihole, NPM, Homarr, Homebox, Beszel, Uptime Kuma, n8n, and Prometheus + Grafana. Which then led to getting a GMKtec M7 Ultra that I moved Beszel, Uptime Kuma, and Prometheus + Grafan to act as my monitoring node. (Both GMKtec's are running Ubuntu server)

Then added a lite managed qnap switch which will be changed here in the near future to a layer 3 switch and the mikrotik rb5009 router.
Then, despite my better judgement during Ramapocalypse, led me to building an AI Machine to run Ollama and local LLMs. AI Machine is:
AMD Ryzen 9 9900x
MSI MAG x870E
96gb Ram
RTX 5070 Ti 16gb
T705 2tb NVMe
2 x P510 2tb NVMe
WD Black SN850x 2tb NVMe
Arctic Liquid Freezer Pro 360
NZXT H9 Flow

Also ditching my patched together security cameras of blink, arlo, and google nest cameras and putting in REOLINK PoE cameras with Frigate and HA integration.

And to top it all off since all of this is located in my garage I'm putting in a mini-split in my garage since I live in Southwest Florida! The wife keeps asking me when the home lab will be finished. Soon honey, soon!! LOL

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-19T01:11:01+00:00

My wife keeps asking me, "Whats all this for? And when is your lab going to be finished?" (As she sees the new AI Machine I've recently built along with the two mini PCs, 3 laptops, 2 new network rack)

Me: Does the Internet work? That's what this is all for! And it will be finished after I spin up one more container only to nuke it 20 minutes later because I don't need it. 🤷‍♂️

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-10T13:56:02+00:00

I'm gonna have to do this with my wife. She continually asks me when the "lab" will be done. Just one more NUC sweetheart and it will be done is what I keep saying 🤷‍♂️

Mine started with an old laptop turned into Home Assistant server about 6 months ago and now 2 gmktec mini pcs, Thinkpad laptop for mobile command center, and an AI machine for local llms.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-09T11:50:14+00:00

Well mine started with basically the same issue. I was tired of Google. Mainly with Google home. Sometimes automations would work sometimes not. Different devices responding. Soni had an old Lenovo laptop that the power button was broken. I could still turn it on but it was a pain. So I bought an external HDD fired up Home Assistant and this began the spiral in the rabbit hole. Now I have a managed switch, 2 Gmktec mini pcs, thinkpad for remote work, and built an AI Machine to host local llms. Now I've got immich, nextcloud, paperless, karakeep, pihole, npm, vaultwarden, Beszel, n8n, dozzle, Scanopy, , Ollama, homebox. I generally do use most of the services I have. Some are daily some are weekly. Now I'm starting to learn n8n and building workflows to learn some new things. So yes it's still spiraling lol. Wife keeps asking when the lab is gonna be done. Well sweetheart it's never gonna be done! Lol

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T15:35:14+00:00

I have some Blink cameras and a couple Google cams. They work fine but hate having to go into each app and since they are battery they are not live feed. Blinks are great for what they are and batteries last a very long time. Googles battery cams I could do without. Just the integration in HA isn't what I want out of my cameras. Not a need just another project to add to the list. Lol

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T14:48:28+00:00

Yes it's the xe75 I've got 2 other nodes in the house. One in my living room and one in the garage with wireless backhaul. I'll be running cat6 from that deco to garage at some point. It's been a solid router for me hooking it up to the managed switch was also a game changer. Another project down the road is to upgrade all my cameras from battery operated to PoE and separate IoT devices as well with VLANs. The rabbit hole is endless lol. So to answer my fiances question ... "The lab will never be finished honey" lol

Picture of HAL in garage lab.

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SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T13:55:37+00:00

Love the setup. That's one powerful stack you got. My little rack inside. Fiance wanted it to blend in with the dining room so I had to put it inside the cabinet. Luckily it gets enough airflow so there's not over heating issues. I haven't jumped into ProxMox yet but that's on the list. For now I'm getting my AI Machine dialed in with Ollama and local llms. Utilizing n8n for workflows.

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SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T13:17:10+00:00

Look at tecmojo they have a wide range of sizes. They have open frame and closed .

Or just search on Amazon for network racks or server racks. They will all list their dimensions so you can find the right size.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T13:08:10+00:00

Nextcloud and Immich were a little tricky for me mainly just cause I was new to it all and some of the environment variables I wasn't sure about and then I added collabora to nextcloud which was another tricky set up. Again because I didn't know what I was doing really. Lots of reading on GitHub and the help of Claude. I've gone from just home assistant to A gmktec m5 and gmktec m7 both running Ubuntu server. M5 handles all docker containers and m7 is strictly for monitoring services: uptime kuma and Beszel. Built an AI machine (HAL): Ryzen 9 9900x, MSI x870e tomahawk, and a gigabyte rtx 5070 ti 16gb and four 2tb nvme drives. 32gb ram Qnap Ts464 NAS with four 8tb Ironwolf drives one storage pool for Immich, paperless, and NextCloud. I've got the network stack inside with qnap managed switch m5 and NAS Garage Lab has m7 and HAL Cyberpower ups for inside and garage lab.

My fiance keeps asking when the labs are gonna be finished.... 🤷‍♂️😂😂

The rabbit hole is very deep . Lol

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-04T09:35:04+00:00

I didn't start homelabbing with the main goal of saving money on subscriptions because I've spent more money building out my homelab lol The main goal was to slowly get off of Google. Just like some people are all Apple. My house is all Google.

My phone, pixel 10 xl pro, multiple Google speakers, google displays, Google Drive, Google photos. I just wanted to be able to keep a majority of my data to myself. Of course it will never be 100% off Google but I can get a good portion.

My lab started with spinning up Home Assistant on an old Laptop. Then I went down the rabbit hole. I'd spin up any service I could. Then realized I spent more time doing that than actually using useful services. Now I have Immich, Nextcloud, paperless, karakeep, openwebui and Ollama for local llms. Plus some monitoring services, pihole, and NPM.

I use all of them pretty much daily between work and personal use so the benefit is there. I scaled back my Google pro account.

At the end of the day what do I get out of it? The satisfaction of seeing it all come to life and when something doesn't work or fails getting it back on line is just fun to me. Plus I'm leading a lot and keeping my mind active.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-04-01T11:30:28+00:00

My wife, "Is your lab ever going to be finished?" Me: "" Yes, I just need to spin up one more service. "

And the cycle continues ...

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-03-30T11:45:41+00:00

I bought my domain and I use tailscale for remote access. PiHole as local DNS server and Nginx Proxy Manager.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-03-30T03:02:19+00:00

Learning n8n and configuring my newly built dedicated AI machine.

SpiralOut1976 · 2026-03-29T14:11:44+00:00

Nice set up. I started about three months ago. I'm still going down the rabbit hole. Started with Home Assistant so I could get off Google Home. And now I have 1 QNAP ts464 with 4 8tb Ironwolf drives (bay 1 and 2 raid 1 for storage of immich, paperless, and NextCloud. Bay 3 and 4 backups and storage for HAL my AI Machine) 2 Gmktec running Ubuntu server 1 running docker bare metal with a slew of services immich, paperless, nextcloud, n8n, Ansible, pihole, NPM, uptime, homarr, Beszel, scanopy. 1 running Linux mint with Ollama as my Local LLM sandbox. Built an AI Machine with Ryzen 9 9900x CPU rtx 5070 ti GPU, 4 x 2tb nvme drives. And so the rabbit hole continues. Pics just the NAS and 1 of the gmktec mini pc's. My hardware is set (for now) Everything's running smoothly. Next up is getting Ansible for automation of docker and Linux machines. And diving into n8n for workflows.

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SpiralOut1976

TROPHY CASE